Dreamweaver for PHP/MySQL applications

Macromedia Dreamweaver is used by many people to edit their standard HTML websites but it can also be used to develop PHP websites where information is pulled from a MySQL database.

It can be daunting to look at PHP code and to write it yourself from scratch but the server functionality and behaviors built into Dreamweaver allow rapid development of quite complex websites using a code-friendly interface.

The code purists may say that the code generated is not to the same standard as a hard-core PHP coder could write – and that may be partly true. However, Dreamweaver has always been extensible and there are many extensions written by other PHP coders that add extra functionality to the default server behaviors in Dreamweaver.

Extensions can often be used to provide the code that is a starting point for a more complex web requirement. The more complex application may require code editing but is a great way of learning if the inclination takes you.

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I’ve been meaning to write a blog post for some time about my web design and development workflow and the tools/software I use. So, this post is part of that and ‘in reply’ to many tweets I see every day (it seems) about other web development tools. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with a healthy marketplace of web design and development software, in fact I heartily support a wider choice. This post is not intended to be criticism of other software either. It’s just that I feel that Dreamweaver sometimes gets a bit of a ‘bad press’ or is perceived as not ‘cool’ – when, in my opinion, it’s still a great web development environment.

I was recoding a form the other day and I needed a different form validation method (using PHP). We all know that JavaScript validation provides a neat user experience but it doesn't work if someone wants to circumvent it.